Comparative Analysis of Transformers for Modeling Tabular Data: A Casestudy using Industry Scale Dataset

We perform a comparative analysis of transformer-based models designed for modeling tabular data, specifically on an industry-scale dataset. While earlier studies demonstrated promising outcomes on smaller public or synthetic datasets, the effectiveness did not extend to larger industry-scale datasets. The challenges identified include handling high-dimensional data, the necessity for efficient pre-processing of categorical and numerical features, and addressing substantial computational requirements. To overcome the identified challenges, the study conducts an extensive examination of various transformer-based models using both synthetic datasets and the default prediction Kaggle dataset (2022) from American Express. The paper presents crucial insights into optimal data pre-processing, compares pre-training and direct supervised learning methods, discusses strategies for managing categorical and numerical features, and highlights trade-offs between computational resources and performance. Focusing on temporal financial data modeling, the research aims to facilitate the systematic development and deployment of transformer-based models in real-world scenarios, emphasizing scalability.